June 2017 Archives

In recent legal evolution, few subjects have changed as much as gender rights.

When a man can become a woman, for example, it represents a 180-degree turn-around that can be dizzying. It cuts across fields as broad as constitutional rights, civil rights, privacy rights, health care, and family law.

In the midst of it all, there is the workweek life of the employer trying to keep their company's anti-harassment policy up to date. This article can help with that. is about considering an anti-gender harassment policy.

Wells Fargo stock ticked up another percent after the U.S. Supreme Court handed a significant win to the bank at the close of the summer session.

The decision, along with other recent developments at the company, pushed the bank slowly upward since its fall from grace several years ago. Shares climbed a modest three percent in the past twelve months, holding its spot as the nation's third largest bank.

Wells Fargo has survived the Wild West since 1852, but can the company really bounce back from an expose that has cost the bank billions? For some shareholders -- especially executives and corporate counsel -- their fate may rise or fall with the bank's legal challenges.

Summer vacation requests aren't normally handled by in-house counsel, but there may be rare times when your input is sought on a vacation request denial. While you can still make HR be the bad guys, if the request is being denied outside normal policy, or there is no policy, then you might have your work cut out for you.

Regardless, if a manager or a member of human resources is bringing you a vacation request to deny, you may want to take a closer look at the true motivation. If the denial is motivated by discrimination or retaliation, it could lead to more than just an unhappy employee, but government agency complaints and lawsuits.

President Trump, who opposed the merger of AT&T and Time Warner when he was a presidential candidate, has not tweeted a thing about it since then.

And despite opposition from key Democrats in Washington, the proposed merger looks as likely to occur as it did when the companies announced their plan last October. That's not a prediction, just a statement of the moment.

A lot has happened on the track to the powerhouse merger since last year, but no one has stopped the train.

David Bonderman was meeting with fellow board member Arianna Huffington and others on the same day a law firm released a report on sexual harassment and gender bias at the company. Huffington said that having one woman on the board often leads to another.

"Actually, what it shows is that it's much more likely to be more talking," Bonderman said.

Tom Moriarty, general counsel for CVS, has a prediction and a prescription for general counsel.

Moriarty predicts that healthcare companies will need more legal help as state and federal governments deal with changes from the Affordable Care Act to the American Health Care Act. He says companies will need to give their general counsel larger roles because law and policy are intertwined in public health.

His generals were afraid to wake him, and they were not allowed to make decisions on their own. Their delay -- and the victory on D-Day -- marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.

General counsel should take a lesson from their history, says attorney and leadership consultant Ken Grady. Rather than follow flawed practices, they should empower outside counsel to win more battles in the courtroom.

It wasn't news when James Comey told the Senate that he leaked a memo to the press; the information had come out a month earlier when he was fired.

But his admission raised issues about confidentiality that have polarized parties and legal pundits. When President Trump told Comey that he expected loyalty about the Russian investigation, what exactly did he expect from the FBI director and former U.S. Attorney?

And what happens when attorneys leak such information? Is it against the law?

James R. Kasinger will take over as general counsel for CRISPR Therapeutics at a time when the company's fate depends on the biggest legal battle in the biotech industry.

The case involves the patent rights to CRISPR-Cas9, a technique that has the potential to transform the biotechnology and genetic engineering industries. The genome editing tool can splice DNA faster, cheaper, and more accurately than other existing methods.

Kasinger, a rising star in his own right, will have to get up to speed.

Once upon a time, companies may have winked at the ethical lapses of their chief executives.

But we're not in Kansas anymore. According to a new study of the world's largest 2,500 public companies, employers are canning their CEOs for improper conduct more than ever. In the past ten years, the firings have increased 36 percent.

So why are companies kicking their top dogs somewhere over the rainbow? Here's what the study says:

It's a scene from a zombie apocalypse movie, but with thousands of undead attorneys walking the streets, arms out-stretched, grabbing at anyone in their way.

It's not that hard to image in the United States, which has more lawyers than any other country. And according to a new report, American companies dramatically outspend the rest of the world on legal services.

After all, you can't really expect a robot to have empathy with a human. The human touch is so important that, according to studies, employees often quit just to "get away" from a manager who doesn't care about them.